1 December Events

Planets align

1 December 1997, eight planets from our Solar System lined up from West to East beginning with Pluto, followed by Mercury, Mars, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn, with a crescent moon alongside, in a rare alignment visible from Earth that lasted until Dec 8. Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are visible to the naked eye, with Venus and Jupiter by far the brightest. A good pair of binoculars is needed to see the small blue dots that are Uranus and Neptune. Pluto is visible only by telescope. The planets also aligned in May 2000, but too close to the sun to be visible from Earth. It will be at least another 100 years before so many planets will be so close and so visible.

Earth photograph

1 December 1959, the first colour photograph of the earth from outer space was taken from the nose of a Thor missile launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The data capsule containing the camera was recovered 16 Feb 1960 on the beach of Mayaguana Island, Bahama Islands, approximately 1,700 miles from the take-off point.

White house telephone

1 December 1878, the White House, Washington, DC, had its first telephone installed by Alexander Graham Bell himself, during the President Rutherford B. Hayes administration. It is reported that the first outgoing call went to Bell, thirteen miles away. Hayes first words instructed Bell to speak more slowly. President Hayes did not use it very often, however, because there were not many other telephones in Washington.

Hydrogen balloon

1 December 1783, the first manned voyage of a hydrogen balloon left Paris carrying Professor Jacques Alexander Cesar Charles and Marie-Noel Robert to about 600 m and landed 43 km away after 2 hours in the air. Robert then left the balloon, and Charles continued the flight briefly to 2700 m altitude, measured by a barometer. This hydrogen-filled balloon was generally spherical and used a net, load ring, valve, open appendix and sand ballast, all of which were to be universally adopted later. His hydrogen generator mixed huge quantities of sulfuric acid with iron filings. On 27 Aug 1783, Charles had launched an unmanned hydrogen balloon, just before the Montgolfiers' flight.